


tender, like the leafling

by Zofiecfield



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Falling In Love, Feelings, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield
Summary: From her flower stall, the gardener noticed the teacher almost immediately.  The teacher, weaving her way through the market, entirely overwhelmed, noticed the gardener as well.Dani meets Jamie at a farmers' market, and her world takes a turn.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 119
Kudos: 321





	1. when first we met

The gardener noticed the woman almost at once. 

She leaned against the tent pole and watched as the woman completed her second lap of the market, then her third, then her tenth. 

The woman did not stop at any of the stalls, edging towards them occasionally as though to enter, but veering off at the last second. 

The woman looked lost, but not in the way you get lost in the absence of a map. Rather, the way you get lost after following a map faithfully for days or weeks or years, and only then finding you had the incorrect map all along. 

The gardener had been that kind of lost before, in her own way. More than once, to be honest. She had clawed her way back each time, desperate for a kindness, for a steadying hand.

As the woman rounded the corner again, nearing the gardener’s stall, the gardener took a small step forward. Not to block the woman’s path or place any demand on her. But instead to offer, gently, if wanted, an exit. 

“Can I help you find something?” She spoke quietly, for the two of them only.

The woman stopped too quickly, and in doing so, swayed on her feet, precarious for a moment. The gardener reached out and brushed her hand lightly against the woman’s elbow to anchor her.

The woman’s eyes ticked in the gardener’s direction, and the calculations she was making were apparent. Fight or flight. Stay or flee. 

The gardener saw enough in those eyes, enough scrawled across that paling face, to confirm her suspicions. _Lost_ , she thought, and as such, _familiar_.

“First market of the season,” the gardener said, with her soft smile, shifting just enough to see the woman’s face. “Only lettuce and old potatoes, really. Everyone’s just getting their footing.”

The gardener saw the woman make her choice then, at least, a fraction of a choice. 

“I’m okay,” the woman said with a quick shake of her head. Then, she turned and met the gardener’s eyes in full. 

One choice. Then a second, much harder than the first.

Stronger she than looked, it seemed. _Unsurprising, really,_ the gardener thought _. Only a fool would have mistaken her for anything else._

The gardener did not push. She just nodded and held the woman’s eyes softly. “Fair enough.”

The woman began to turn away but paused before the movement could truly begin. 

She looked back at the gardener, meeting her eyes once again. “Thanks. For asking.”

And with that, the woman left, and the gardener’s thoughts followed.

For the rest of the day, and every day after, her mind drifted back to the woman, over and over again. 

The teacher had not been to a farmers’ market before. There had not been one near the house, and Eddie had not been interested in easy afternoon drives through other neighborhoods in search of small adventure. 

Or, perhaps, he might have been, if pressed. But when she had pictured those drives and those small adventures, she had not pictured him by her side. 

So, she had not asked, and he had not offered.

They went to the large grocery store by their house on Saturdays, or, in unexpected need of milk, to the corner shop on the walk home from school. 

But Eddie was gone now. And the house with him. The lists and the expectation of dinner on the table.

She was free to shop where she liked and when she liked, and to feed herself as she wished. And if she chose to seek out small adventure along the way, there was no one to stop her.

That should have pleased her, and indeed, as she left the house that morning with empty totes tucked under one arm, it had.

But now, having walked five miles from home, her thoughts growing darker with each step, it did not. 

Now, she was utterly and entirely overwhelmed at the prospect of this particular adventure. 

She was perfectly capable of purchasing groceries, of course, in a shop, with a list. Of course. 

Though, true, her pantry was nearly empty at the moment and her refrigerator held nothing but a jar of pickles and some cheese. She passed the store every day on her walk to and from school, but to stop in had seemed to require a bit too much energy for a few too many days. 

Perfectly capable, in theory, anyway.

But here, in this open square with the quiet guitar melodies wafting through the air, and the comfortable chatter of people who did this all the time, she felt quite small and quite, quite incapable.

She walked a lap of the market, hoping to settle herself. It did not work, so she kept walking.

Her periphery began to dim five laps in, familiar panic gripping at her chest. 

She was, she though idly as she walked another lap and fought to stay conscious, supposed to feel better than this.

If that all were not enough, there was the gardener. A complication she could not quite comprehend in her current state, but a complication nonetheless. 

The teacher had spotted the gardener right away, in her first sweep of the market, as her anxiety rose quietly up the back of her neck.

The gardener, flyaway dark curls, barely tamed by the hat on her head, arranging bouquets with steady concentration. 

The gardener, on one knee, offering a single flower to a small child who had taken a tumble outside her stall, scraping a palm. 

The gardener, watching her with that faint smile, head tilted just so. 

The gardener reaching out to her through the din of panic with the faintest brush of fingers against elbow.

“Can I help you find something?”

The irony of the question almost made the teacher laugh. Almost.

Her thoughts took a hard split. 

Half came loose and spun away entirely. _I’ll lie on the tile in the kitchen when I get home, maybe for a moment. Maybe until morning._

Half hit a dead halt and narrowed to single, precise point. The gardener’s fingertips on her skin. _Oh._

How she extricated herself from the situation, she could not remember. Next she knew, she was halfway home, walking at a frantic pace.

She sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and put her head between her knees. Sucked in slow breaths until her mind started up again, in stuttering bursts.

Only then did it come back to her. Clear as day.

The gardener’s kind smile. The gardener’s eyes, seeing right through her.

 _No_. That wasn’t it. Many eyes had seen through her over the years.

No. The gardener’s eyes had seen right _into_ her. 

The teacher pondered this new and foreign thought as she stood and brushed off her shorts, as she walked the remaining miles home, as she lay on the cool tile in her tiny apartment and let her body weigh her down.

She closed her eyes and saw the gardener’s, and felt, inexplicably and for the first time in a very long time, the slightest bit alive.


	2. spare me a second try

The teacher tried, truly, to put the gardener out of her mind. The gardener, with her smile, with her knowing eyes, was a question the teacher was not prepared to answer, written in a language she had forced herself not to learn.

But, a week passed and still her mind wandered. 

Saturday came, and as she walked the miles to the farmers’ market, her only thought was of the gardener.

At the entrance to the market, the familiar itch of panic found her, desperate for a scratch. She had the sudden, urgent desire to spin on her heels and run home. 

But, you see, the teacher had spent years running. She was worn through and so deeply, deeply tired. 

Tired enough to stay.

She allowed herself one lap around the stalls to get her bearings, to steady herself.

She lingered, for a moment, over a selection of muffins until the gardener was occupied with a customer, then passed the stall quickly with her breath held.

 _Just one lap, then I’ll talk to her_. That was the deal she’d made with herself this morning, and it was a deal she intended to keep.

The teacher was not, admittedly, used to keeping promises to herself. It was a skill she had long since let atrophy, and it took all of her strength to manage it.

As the first lap ( _the only lap_ , she reminded herself, sternly) finished, she began to lose her nerve. 

The teacher was accustomed to the comforting disappointment and sickening relief left in the wake of a broken promise to herself. Every time she bit her tongue, every time she played along, every time she said yes when she meant _please, god, no_. 

She had hated that feeling and relished it all the same. It signaled both a return to safety from the brink of a truth she was not ready to accept, and another day, another lie, another step farther from herself.

But as she lapped the market, sensing her resolve slipping through her fingers, she found something unexpected. 

The scales had tipped, ever so slightly, in her favor. 

Without looking too closely at the thought, for fear it might slip further, she abandoned her circuitous path and cut straight across the market. Straight to the gardener’s stall.

The teacher had intentions of introducing herself. She may have, in the bathroom mirror that morning and as she closed her eyes the night before, practiced out loud, in a futile attempt to tamp down the quiver in her voice. 

But all the practice in the world proved useless when the gardener turned towards her. A curious smile slipped across the gardener’s face at the sight of the teacher, and the teacher could think of nothing else.

“Back again,” the gardener said, a comment, not a question, as though she’d had no doubt. “Can I help you?”

The teacher grasped at the only shred of her plan she could reach in her now quite fuzzy mind, and blurted out, “Beans!”

The gardener, to her credit, tried hard not to laugh. She very nearly succeeded.

Blushing hard, yet feeling no inclination to run under the gardener’s soft chuckle, the teacher found herself smiling too. 

It was an unfamiliar smile, easy, sprung to her lips of its own accord, without the clench of teeth. 

Take a breath and try again.

“I’m a teacher. Fourth grade. It’s the last few months of school and the kids are restless. I thought they’d like to grow beans.”

The gardener’s smile turned wry, though still, unquestionably kind. She ducked her head to the side and studied the teacher. “If it’s beans you’ve come for, we might have a problem.”

The teacher froze, her smile dissipating as quickly as it had appeared, certain she had missed something. 

The itch returned, the temptation towards panic.

As though she could see it, that little itch at the back of the teacher’s heart, the gardener took mercy. She nodded behind her to the stall, drawing the teacher’s eye.

“You see,” the gardener started, “it’s just that-”

“This is a flower shop,” the teacher cut in, a little louder than intended, registering the stall for the first time. She looked around slowly, if only to avoid the gardener’s gaze for a moment longer while she collected herself. “You sell flowers. Right, yeah.”

“I do.” 

The chuckle in the gardener’s voice drew the teacher back to her, irresistible in its sweetness. The teacher bit her lip, forgetting, for a blink of a moment, that the world existed.

The gardener let the moment sit, let it simmer between them just long enough to stick. 

“But,” the gardener said, easing her way into the moment again, “beans are boring, aren’t they? Wait here.”

The gardener slipped out the back of the stall without waiting for an answer, climbing into the truck parked at the rear. The teacher could hear her rummaging around, muttering quietly to herself with an occasional curse.

The gardener hopped out of the truck a moment later, only slightly disheveled for her efforts. 

“Sunflowers,” she said, triumphant, brandishing a small packet of seeds. 

With ease, as though she touched the teacher all the time, as though there were no barriers between them, the gardener gently lifted the teacher’s hand and placed the seeds in her palm. “Plant them in the empty milk cartons, from lunch. Kids will love them. Way better than beans, anyhow.”

The teacher tried, quite hard, in fact, to comprehend the packet of seeds in her hand. But her vision had been suddenly obscured by the graze of the garden’s fingers across hers, by gardener’s palm, warm on the back of her hand. 

The contact lasted no time at all, but the teacher was quite sure she would think of nothing else for days.

She stammered her thanks, off-kilter now and pleasantly so. 

The teacher thought she might combust from the uncommon sweetness of this all. From the soft touch, with no demand and no expectation. From the gardener’s kind eyes, reading her like a well-studied text. 

Backing her way out of the stall, the teacher managed, “I’ll, um, I’ll come back and tell you how it goes.”

“You do that, yeah,” the gardener said. That chuckle was back, running just under the words.

The teacher risked a look back, as she crossed the market. One final glance of the gardener to carry her home. 

The gardener stood, leaning against the edge of the stall as she had that first day, watching. She offered a small wave and that soft smile, before turning back to her flowers. 

  
The teacher realized only later that she had forgotten to introduce herself and had yet to learn the gardener’s name. 

_Next time_ , she promised herself. _There will be a next time_.

The gardener had hoped the woman would come back. 

She had, though she would not admit it to herself, thought of the woman more with each passing day. 

She found herself choosing flowers that reminded her of the woman, tying together bouquets of sturdy greens and delicate blossoms that bloom early in defiance of the lingering cold. She found herself studying them closely, inhaling deeply, to know each sprig in its truest self.

The gardener was used to taking care. Each plant, each sprout and leafling, has its own unique needs. She took pride in them as they thrived under her fingertips. 

The woman was not so different from them. Poorly cared for, but determined to survive.

And the woman did come back. _The teacher_ , the gardener told herself after, and was warmed to know the woman better.

The gardener watched in quiet awe as the teacher fought and won her silent battle. As the teacher’s cheeks blushed, as she chose to stay a moment longer though her feet begged to run. 

The gardener took the teacher’s hand, feeling bold, feeling compassionate and kind, sure that she was the steadier of the two. In doing so, she found herself entirely unprepared for the way her heart would stutter, for the disorienting shift of the pavement beneath her, for the way the weight of the woman’s hand in hers would linger for days and days and days.

In that moment, the gardener thought she could do this with the teacher, just this, just a touch of palm and fingertips, forever and never tire.

This was a new thought for the gardener, who had grown content amongst her plants and had long since forgone thoughts of forever.

New, but it did not fade in the least as the week wore on, and she could not talk herself out of it.

 _Next time_ , she thought. _There will be a next time._


	3. draw me in sweetly

The gardener woke early, long before the sun. 

She forced herself to maintain a steady pace, as she rose, as she dressed, as she loaded the truck and drove to the market. She set up her stall in the usual way, said her usual hellos, and prepared for the day, as usual.

All this done in defiance of her heart, which rushed ahead of her all along and refused be tamed.

She did not allow herself to look over her shoulder, to scan the crowd for the face she had thought about far too often for far too many days. She tamped down the pangs of disappointment as customers arrived and each was not the teacher.

And then, the teacher was there, and the day was no longer usual at all. 

The gardener took her time, wiping her hands and returning her supplies to the bench, in hopes she could slow her racing heart, but to no avail. 

The thud of gardener’s heart was loyal only to the teacher’s gaze, glancing across her cheekbones and coming to rest on her fingertips. 

Damn that heart and its disloyalty. She could not help but smile.

As she entered the market for the third time, the teacher was acutely aware she had no ready excuse to speak to the gardener. The sunflowers, planted by the children only two days ago, offered little assistance. 

All week long, she had tried to think of an opening line that did not betray the newness of her, the nerves and interest abounding. But each draft had felt thin and she left her home that morning emptyhanded. 

_I could just wave_ , she told herself, to ease her anxious heart. _Just wave and keep walking. Call out a quick hello as I pass. That would be enough._

This plan was deeply unsatisfying, and she knew quite well that it would not be enough at all. But in the absence of any better, it would have to do.

So preoccupied was the teacher with her thoughts, she did not see the baker step out of his stall, arms heaped with freshly bagged soda breads. 

The teacher slammed into the back of him, causing them both to stumble and the soda breads to fly from his hands to the pavement. 

“Oh, god! I’m so sorry!” the teacher stammered, ducking quickly to retrieve the bags before they could be inadvertently trampled by passersby. 

The baker brushed off her apologies and the dirt from the bags of bread. “Never mind. It’s a beautiful day and we were both caught up in it.”

“If I damaged any, I’ll pay for them,” the teacher insisted. “Again, I’m so sorry”

“No need, no need. They’re quick breads, after all,” he said, winking at her. 

The teacher smiled uncertainly, a little bewildered. 

“Get it?” he asked. “No _knead_? Because they’re quick breads? No, hmm?”

A melodic chuckle floated in from the stall next door. 

“At least she thinks I’m funny,” the baker said, grinning and nodding towards the dividing wall.

Looking both ways this time, to guard against other distracted young women, he stepped out again and peered down the row of stalls. 

The teacher ducked around him, hesitant. “Well, um, if there’s nothing I can do… have a good day.”

The baker glanced at her and his face lit up. 

“Actually,” he said, a smile blooming across his face, “would you do me a favor?”

The baker hopped behind the small table and found a marker. He hastily jotted a note on a brown paper bag, which he then stuffed with a large cinnamon bun. 

“There’s a stall two down, called Leafling Greenery. Would you give this to the gardener there for me? Crabby thing, goes by the name of Jamie.”

He held out the paper bag to the teacher, hopeful.

In truth, the teacher could not believe her luck. An excuse and the gardener’s name, all at once. 

“Of course!” she said, taking the bag from him a bit too quickly. If the baker noticed the eagerness in her voice, the giddy smile overtaking her, he was kind enough not to let on. 

“Jamie,” the teacher whispered to herself as she left the baker’s stall, letting the name roll across her tongue, savoring the way it danced through her lips. 

“Surely she won’t kill the messenger,” the baker muttered to himself as he returned to his work, but the teacher was far too distracted to hear him.

The gardener was busy with a customer when the teacher arrived. 

The teacher stood a few paces back, shifting side to side, gripping the paper bag, utterly failing to look casual. Unable to find a less awkward position for her body and cursing her poor timing, she occupied herself by studying the note the baker had written on the bag.

_2 rosemary, 2 basil, 2 thyme, and whatever else you can spare. (Sorry, dear Jamie, forgive me.)_

The customer left quickly, though the brief delay had wreaked havoc on the pit of the teacher’s stomach.

The gardener took her time, meticulously wiping her hands off on a cloth, finger by finger, and setting straight her rows of brown paper and string. 

The teacher tried desperately not to stare, but the smile on the gardener’s face when she finally looked up informed her she’d been long since caught out.

“Back again,” the gardener said, ambling over. “More beans, is it?”

The teacher blushed and laughed, a little burst that bubbled up from within her. The gardener grinned.

“The baker a few stalls down asked me to give this to you,” the teacher said, brandishing the bag.

The gardener raised an eyebrow and glanced at the note, then cursed quietly and handed the bag back.

“Must be fucking kidding me,” she muttered.

The gardener stepped out of the stall and yelled down the row. “Oi, Owen!”

The teacher followed, curious, and saw the baker peek out of his stall, offering the gardener a sheepish wave.

“Mate, again?” the gardener hollered.

“I know, I know,” the baker called back, one hand mussing his hair. “Sorry, Jamie!”

She sighed deeply but waved him off. “All good, Owen, all good.”

The woman in the stall between them, which was filled with natural cleaning products and beautiful soaps studded with flowers and herbs, leaned around the shared wall. “Again, Owen? Mine are still thriving from last summer!”

The baker smiled sweetly and leaned towards her. “That’s because you, dear Hannah, are shear perfection.”

“Owen,” the woman breathed, “you’re too much.” She turned from him, fanning her face with her hand. 

This drew a reluctant laugh from the gardener as she stepped back to the stall. 

The exchange between the three friends tugged at the teacher’s heart, a longing for that sort of familiarity, that sort of ease. 

The gardener glanced at her and said, “It’s been years with those two, honestly. If he doesn’t ask her out this summer, I’m locking them both in the back of my truck until they sort themselves out.”

The teacher’s thoughts diverted sharply. To be locked away with the gardener… it would be dark, to be sure, perhaps a brush of a hand to orient themselves, a whisper below the echo. Maybe in the cool quiet they would sit closely and talk of -

She snapped to suddenly, finding the gardener considering her with a subtly wry smile and one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. 

The teacher realized she’d been staring again. She blushed fiercely but did not look away.

The gardener held her gaze for just about as long as the teacher’s fluttering heart could stand. At the very final moment, when the teacher thought she might very well combust, the gardener looked away. 

The teacher sucked in a sharp breath, involuntary and far too audible. (The gardener did not mention it, but her grin spoke volumes.)

“Here, take this,” the gardener said, shoving a cardboard tray into the teacher’s arms. 

The teacher juggled for a moment, adjusting the paper bag in one hand and the balancing the tray against her hip. 

By the time she’d sorted herself out, the gardener was already across the stall, stooping down to inspect rows of potted herbs. 

“Well, come on, then,” the gardener said, glancing up to catch the teacher’s eye.

It was all the teacher could do to walk slowly; her feet begged so dearly to run.

The teacher held the tray steady as the gardener piled on pots of herbs. 

“That man kills plants faster than I can pot them. No idea how he does it,” the gardener muttered, fond in her annoyance.

Admiring a particularly robust rosemary plant, the gardener smiled slyly up at the teacher before setting it down on the tray. “Let’s see him try to kill this hearty fucker,” she said, with a low chuckle. 

The teacher’s heart shivered, and she smiled, feeling utterly warm and welcomed in this joke she was not truly part of. 

The gardener checked the list again and nodded, satisfied. “That’ll do. Good.”

She relieved the teacher of the tray, setting it down out of the way, then took the paper bag.

The gardener plopped down on an upturned crate, legs wide and body easy. She leaned onto her elbows and opened the bag, humming happily as she pulled the large cinnamon bun from it. 

She looked up at the teacher, now standing emptyhanded several paces away, and nodded towards the low stool beside her, a question, an offer.

For a fraction of a moment, the teacher paused to consider where she stood. The past few minutes, though ordinary to the undiscerning eye, had been entirely extraordinary, entirely new. 

She should, she thought, be halfway home by now, loneliness and longing and dread seeping back in. 

But instead, she was here, her heart pounding in the nicest of ways, the gardener smiling sweetly at her. A question, an offer.

The teacher found she too was smiling, easy and open, and her usually restless limbs were all too content to stay.

She took the seat next to the gardener, tucking her feet onto the rung and drawing her knees up to her.

The gardener tore the bun in two and handed the larger half to the teacher. 

They ate in silence. It was a silence the teacher did not feel the need to fill. Plenty full already, with the gardener beside her.

The bun was sweet and melted on the teacher’s tongue, flooding her system with a pleasant calm. 

When she reached the last bite, held between two sticky fingers, she paused. Her mind was quieter than it had been in months. In years, perhaps, a lifetime. 

All that quiet, so much space without the clutter and noise.

She turned to the gardener. “I’m Dani, by the way.”

Her voice did not quiver, not even a bit.

The gardener’s smiled that soft smile, holding the teacher’s eye. She rested the tip of her thumb on her bottom lip, grazing her teeth across the pad of it to capture a drop of icing there.

Then, with a small nod, she said the word out loud. “Dani.”

Teacher swallowed hard and thought, in that moment, she would quite content to never be Danielle again. 

As the teacher left the stall that morning, tray of herbs in hand to deliver on her way, the gardener called after her. “Dani!”

The teacher turned, stomach in a frenzied dance.

“See you next week,” the gardener said.

“Next week,” the teacher nodded, her heart swelling to a near painful point. “Goodbye, Jamie.”

The gardener liked the way the teacher settled into her body as they sat side by side, liked the way peace fell between them, liked the way the teacher allowed the silence found there to rest and rest and rest.

The gardener liked the honesty of the teacher’s body, the blush of her cheeks and the sudden intake of breath, the way she stared without meaning to. Not intentional, not a means to an end. Just honesty laid open for the gardener to see. 

The gardener watched in awe as the lostness of the teacher thinned, the woman underneath growing clearer with each passing minute, with each passing week.

The vulnerability of it all shook the gardener deeply. So often not worth the risk, in the gardener’s experience. So often a disappointment in the end, so often a wound left behind. 

But sitting next to the teacher, the gardener found herself splitting open, cleaved wide by the teacher’s gaze.

The gardener could not tell where the sweetness of the icing on her tongue ended and the start of the teacher’s name began. She said the name a second time, to feel it once more on her lips, to pull the teacher back to her, just for one more moment.

The teacher walked home slowly, bag heavy and heart light. 

Grateful for the herbs, the baker had insisted she accept a loaf of bread ( _for saving me from Jamie’s wrath_ , he claimed, with a fond smile and a wink). 

The baker, chatting to her as though a friend. ( _Owen_ , the teacher reminded herself.) 

The chuckle from the soap maker next door. (H _annah? Yes, that was it. Hannah._ ) 

The gardener, who had smiled so sweetly. _Jamie._

The tenderness of them and their welcome hit the teacher in a wave of warmth and longing and gratitude. 

She bought another cinnamon roll and three more loaves of bread before she said goodbye to the baker, careful to choose loaves smelling strongly of the gardener’s herbs. On a whim, she ducked into the soap maker’s stall as well. The soap maker smiled knowingly and suggested a particular bar, studded with rosemary and delicate flowers. The teacher bought two.

That evening, the teacher sat on the floor of her kitchen and ate bread and cheese with hands smelling of the gardener’s flowers and herbs. 

She found herself deeply hungry for the first time in a very, very long time.


	4. be patient as I go

Spring passed in this way, and summer came. As the weeks went by, minutes in the gardener’s company turned to hours. 

They fell into a gentle rhythm, no push, no pull, just the sway of one week into the next.

They talked of little of consequence. Backstory felt irrelevant when each particular passing moment was so precious on its own.

The world outside the farmers’ market and the Leafling Greenery continued to turn. 

There was still too much empty space in the teacher’s apartment, too much room for noise in her head. There were still too many voicemails on her phone, filled with bewilderment, anger, and hurt; voicemails that went unanswered, because the answer was too hard to say and it wouldn’t heal them anyway. 

There was still the anxious grip on her heart when she stood still too long or thought too hard, the edge of panic rising.

But, with a certainty she began to lean heavily on, the week would pass, and Saturday would come came. 

The teacher no longer sought excuses to enter the stall. The gardener’s smile upon seeing her was excuse enough.

She greeted the gardener’s friends by name and they greeted her the same. 

The baker insisted on doubling everything she bought, joking, _Jamie will surely steal more than half, so take two, please. Wait, take three_. 

The teacher took to pausing in the soap maker’s stall to chat for a moment and admire the newest scents and soaps. 

She even grew so bold, so boldly familiar, as to nudge them towards each other occasionally, in cahoots with the gardener, with a wink or a nod.

And then, straight to the gardener, with her thermos of hot tea and her easy company.

No excuse needed at all.

They filled their time with laughter and silence and quiet conversation. 

The teacher found she did not mind being teased by the gardener. Teasing had always felt to the teacher like being stripped down and left behind, exposed and powerless. But the gardener teased with no malice at all, no attempt to establish an upper hand. 

The gardener teased like a hand outstretched, beckoning and welcoming her in. 

The gardener, content with her peace and solitude and the company of her plants, was surprised each time her heart leapt at the sight of the teacher. Each time the teacher laughed, each time the teacher teased in return, her world cracked open a little wider. 

The teacher was a terrible flirt, unskilled in the nicest of ways, and the gardener caught herself flirting again and again, just to see the teacher’s blush and haphazard return.

The gardener caught herself daydreaming too, shreds of hope against all better judgement, against every stern principle on which she had built her carefully guarded life. Shreds of hope and thoughts of a different kind of life, a different kind of quiet, a different kind of peace. 

Glancing fingertips turned to _touch,_ and the teacher, who had never much liked to be touched before, savored each one. 

These touches did not lay claim to her, they placed no demands and took nothing from her. 

The bump of the gardener’s hip against hers, a palm on an elbow to catch her attention, the slow drift of a hand across the small of her back in passing. 

Each was meant for her and for her only. Not for others' eyes, nor for the world’s expectations. Just for her.

Each was a gift, offered freely for her to accept or refuse, and accepted, each lightened her heart the smallest bit more. 

The gardener, always adept at reading people, whether she let on to the skill or not, was stunned to find the teacher could read her just as well. 

Days when the rain was wreaking havoc or a delayed shipment had her teeth on edge, weeks that had seen her head a bit too dark, a bit too lonely. The teacher had a way of reaching into her, soothing the wrinkles, drawing her back out of herself.

It was unnerving at times, to be bare of her armor, armor she had built herself long ago and wore tightly bound. Unnerving, and frightening, and such a relief.

They did not hurry along. 

It would have been satisfying to do so, of course, at least in the short term. Terribly satisfying, in fact. 

But, each for their own reasons, they did not hurry. Each knew, from the scars they bore, the risks of letting someone in, the risk of someone new.

The potential between them simmered gently and deepened with each passing week.

The tipping point would come, they knew, soon and soon enough.

And each _goodbye_ , as they ventured out alone into the depths of the week to come, felt like a promise of more to come, an anchor and a safe harbor in the distance.

“Put your finger there in the middle and press down hard,” the gardener instructed, taking the teacher’s hand and placing her outstretched finger firmly in the center of crossed twine.

The gardener tied the twine around the teacher’s finger, releasing her at the last moment. 

Pleased with the knot, she set aside the bouquet wrapped in neat brown paper and began to prepare the next.

The teacher was well aware the gardener could do this on her own. 

The gardener had, surely, prepared the dozens of bundled flowers surrounding them without the teacher’s fingertip. Surely, she’d spent hours alone tying fragile stems together to hang their blossoms to dry. 

The teacher and her finger were unnecessary to the task.

But, unnecessary as they may have been, these little tugs into the gardener’s world were so very welcome and they warmed her through and through.

“Smell this,” the gardener said, plucking a leaf from a flowing sprig of lavender before tucking it into the bundle in front of her. “It’s one of my favorites.”

The gardener rubbed the leaf between her fingertips then offered it for the teacher to smell. 

The teacher leaned forward and inhaled, fingers light on the gardener’s wrist to steady the motion.

Whatever scent the leaf held, however lovely, was entirely lost on her. Instead, she was instantly wrapped in the smell of the gardener herself. Rosemary and roses and peppermint, tea and damp earth and sweat on skin. 

The teacher ran her thumb across the smooth inside of the gardener’s wrist absentmindedly as the scent swirled around her head. 

She felt the gardener’s sharp intake of breath. 

The teacher thought she could drown in that breath quite happily. 

Suddenly and utterly unmoored, her gaze traced the path from the gardener’s wrist, to her shoulder, to the dip of her collarbone, to lips, parted ever so slightly, and finally to the gardener’s eyes.

There, she found a question waiting.

“Smells nice,” the teacher said, an afterthought. Barely a thought at all, really.

Her hand left the gardener’s wrist and drifted up and up and up to find the back of the gardener’s neck, fingertips drawing slow circles among the baby hairs there.

An answer.

The gardener’s palm dropped to the teacher’s waist, leaf long forgotten, and the softest of smiles bloomed on her face. 

The hope in that smile was enough for the teacher. 

Her head was pleasantly silent as she shifted forwards, gaze caught again on the gardener’s lips.

“Dani,” the gardener whispered, fingers gripping the fabric of the teacher’s t-shirt, pulling her closer.

A voice rang out across the tent. “Miss Clayton? Is that you?”

And the moment shattered.

The teacher spun around to find the mother of one of her students, waving at her from the stall entrance. 

“Mrs. Wingrave! Hi!” The words caught in her throat as she was dragged back into the world.

The woman beamed around the stall. “Is this where you’re getting your bouquets? How lovely! Remind me, when is the wedding?”

The teacher’s brow furrowed, and for one unhinged moment, she was terribly confused. _Jamie and I only just met,_ she almost said. _I haven’t even kissed her yet, but yes, the wedding, someday, surely, if she’ll have me._

In that moment of disjointed thought, halfway still in the broken moment, the warmth of the hand on her hip retreated. A harsh shiver ran through her, despite the sickening heat overtaking her. 

Reality crashed down. 

The woman plowed ahead, missing the pain on the teacher’s face, the panic rushing through her. “Flora is so excited! She comes home from school talking about you and your wedding all the time. Little girls, right? You might as well be a princess with your prince!”

“Um, no, it’s not… no,” the teacher stammered, shaking her head and trying desperately to find the words needed to turn the clock back. One minute, one minute would do. “No...”

“Is this where you’re getting the flowers? So good to shop local, of course. I’m looking for something to pacify my mother-in-law and this seemed charming.” The woman said this as she spun off towards the carnations, oblivious to the damage in her wake.

“But, I… no.” Familiar panic, familiar pressure bore down on the teacher’s lungs. 

In her rapidly dimming periphery, the teacher saw the gardener step away and turn to busy herself elsewhere.

She could feel the gardener slipping from her, and she ached to shift the course of this all, but the din in her ears was making it terribly difficult to think, terribly difficult to find the words.

Soon enough, flowers sold and bundled off, they were alone again, but the damage was already done. The world and all of its burden had found its way into their quiet space, snagged and torn what they had woven.

The gardener felt herself closing up, folding in on herself across well-worn creases. 

Foolish to have let her heart get the better of her. Foolish to have let a fledgling acquaintance take root, foolish to have begun to hope, begun to believe.

She tried so hard to ask nothing of the teacher, had resolutely laid no expectations as they grew closer and the weeks went by. Had tried to keep her heart at bay, knowing far too well its tenderness.

But, questions unspoken were still questions, and answers in eyes and fingertips were easy to believe and readily misunderstood.

The teacher, now paled and shaking with coursing panic, watched as the gardener withdrew. 

The gardener, still sweet, still truly kind. But, just below the soft surface of her, the hard stop. The edge, barring any entry.

“It’s all good,” the gardener said, as though she meant it. As though nothing had been broken. “All good.”

The gardener resumed her task of twine and brown paper and did not look up again. 

“Jamie,” the teacher started, but the gardener stopped her with a shake of the head. 

“If you need flowers for that wedding of yours, you let me know,” she said, and the door of her creaked shut.

The teacher could not think of anything to say. No, that’s not quite right. She could think of a million things to say, a few of which needed saying desperately. 

But in the moment, she could find no way to say them, having buried them inside and left them unsaid for so long. For so, so long.

Her tongue, so deeply bitten, betrayed her at first test.

The teacher walked home in a daze. She walked and walked and drowned in the writhing of her skin on her frame.

She stood at the kitchen sink and scrubbed her hands over and over with rosemary soap and cold water as the tears finally found her. 

She leaned forward onto her elbows and laid her face in her hands, sucking in air which smelled, with sweet cruelty, of the gardener.


	5. i loved you like the tender leafling

The gardener plowed through the rest of the day with her head down, sliding her thoughts past the bruises in her chest, which stung and ached for soothing. She kept her hands busy and did not look over her shoulder.

The gardener told herself it was good the teacher left when she did, before the gardener’s heart got involved. A faulty premise, of course. Her heart had been involved from the very first day, and it was far too late, far, far too late to save it. A faulty premise she willfully ignored.

The gardener told herself it would be a relief to return to her routine, content with the quiet of it, with the predictable monotony in the absence of people, in the absence of teachers and exposed hearts. Just plants, capable of very little chaos and very little hurt.

The gardener told herself she did not care whether the teacher returned. People come and people go, and the teacher was no different.

It did not matter, either way. 

_All good_ , she told herself. _All good._

The day ended eventually, mercifully. 

The baker peeked into her stall on his way out, with offers of drinks and company. She turned him down, desperate to be alone, desperate to convince herself alone would be just plenty.

Company did not matter. The hope born in the teacher’s smile, in the teacher’s touch, did not matter. The daydreams, the delicate potential. 

None of it mattered. 

The gardener piled the last of the crates into the back of the truck and slammed close door. 

She turned, and found the teacher standing there.

And it mattered, very much.

“Jamie,” the teacher whispered, and the gardener’s heart split open. 

She had tried so hard to seal it tightly, and but her name on the teacher’s lips, the question in the teacher’s eyes. But, all her faulty premises, all her practiced solitude, they were no match.

The teacher reached out and laid her hand on the gardener’s forearm, sliding it down slowly until she had tucked the gardener’s hand into her own.

The teacher’s brow was furrowed and painted with concern, but her eyes were clear and she stood steady. “Can we get a drink?” 

“I don’t know, Dani,” the gardener hesitated, unsure she could bear to sit beside the teacher, unsure she could bear not to.

The teacher waited. She did not budge or plead or look away. She just waited.

The gardener could not hold her heart at bay, could not quell its hopeful stirrings. 

But her body was still her own, though in truth, only barely. So she clung to the only walls she had left and slid her hand from the teacher’s.

The gardener took one step back, then two. 

A wince of familiar pain flickered through the teacher’s eyes and the gardener could not bear it. 

She swallowed hard and nodded once. “Alright, one drink.”

They rode in fragile silence and the teacher did not dare break it. 

She had surprised herself today, digging up a resolve she had long since thought lost. 

As her sobs had faded and her head had cleared, she had decided, with startling clarity, that she was not ready to accept this sadness and tuck it inside her with all the others. 

She would not let panic take another day from her. She would not let the narrative snap, not when it was the right story for the first time in her life.

She washed her face and ate a slice of bread. Tied her shoes and left.

In the gardener’s company, the teacher had felt alive and hungry and hopeful and seen. 

The world had dictated her path for so long, dragged her in its fierce currents, and she had succumbed.

And she was done. 

They turned into the narrow drive behind the Bly Manor Pub, and parked in the small lot there, beside a tidy greenhouse.

“Jamie, is this yours?” the teacher asked, forgetting their silence in her delight.

“It is. Owner of the pub’s a good bloke. He served nearly a decade years ago. Built himself back up with some help from others. When he can, he passes along those kindnesses.”

“It’s lovely.” 

The teacher ached to go inside, to burrow into the space where the gardener spent her days, to run her fingers over the pots and leaves and flowers that kept this woman company. But the gardener did not offer up this piece of herself, and the teacher did not ask.

The gardener climbed out of the truck and shouldered her bags. She unlocked the back door of the pub and headed inside, leaving the teacher to follow.

The din from the pub, already full in the early evening, filtered into the back storeroom where they stood.

At the next door, the gardener paused, looking back over her shoulder at the teacher for a moment, considering.

She turned left instead and lead the teacher up the small staircase there, one flight, then two, bringing them to a small landing at the very top. There was a single door there, and the gardener pushed it open.

The one-room flat inside was filled with plants. All manner of greens and bright flowers, subtle hues and intricate contrast that pulled the teacher’s eye from one to another. 

Flowers hung from ceiling hooks, drying in delicate bundles, and pots covered every available surface.

In one corner was a large wooden worktable, strewn with brown paper and string and notebooks of sketches and hurried scrawl.

In the other, a small kitchenette and a mattress set on wooden slats. 

Standing in the space felt like being wrapped tightly in the gardener’s arms, or so the teacher imagined. 

She wandered into the room, gaze springing from one delight to the next, from this intricate bouquet to that spiny succulent begging to be touched.

She forgot herself, forgot her precarious company, forgot the gardener was not yet hers. 

The teacher, still a foreign body in her own stark apartment and its unforgiving emptiness, looked around the gardener’s room and thought a single word.

_Home._

The gardener cleared her throat loudly, pulling the teacher out of her reverie. 

The teacher turned to find the gardener leaning against the window frame, with the most curious expression on her face. Caution, yes, but underneath, warmth and longing and a laugh meant for a different day, a different time.

The teacher smiled softly back and promised herself she would not let her tongue stop her tonight. She promised herself she would not wait another day, would not risk another moment without the gardener.

The gardener handed the teacher two bottles of beer and a thermos of tea, then pushed open the window. She climbed out onto the fire escape and reached back, first for the bottles and then for the teacher’s hand.

It was a hand offered for leverage in the awkward climb, but the teacher did not let go.

She held the hand as she settled next to the gardener, as she pulled her knees to her chest, as she took the final breath before the words she was determined to speak. 

She held the gardener’s hand, and the gardener did not let go.

The teacher’s story went like this:

A childhood, lonely.

A friend, welcomed. 

A family, at last, found in that friend.

A lie, told early without even knowing it was a lie. A blindness in the darkness, unrecognized but still present, still undeniable. 

The world and its heavy expectations told a story about her, and everyone listened. So, she listened too.

A lie, told to herself, told to hold the world and its weight at bay. 

A lie told for years and years and years. A lie she began to see for what it was, as she grew, as she wanted, as she feared her own heart more and more.

An engagement, when she could delay it no longer. An engagement, when the story demanded. A promise of forever, of family, of an end to _alone_.

But forever and family do not guarantee an end to alone, as she found. 

The heart cannot be lied to, cannot be dissuaded from the truth, cannot be bought off and silenced by a story it has been told.

They were not the right forever, the right family. The lie made its weight known and it began to strangle her.

The story was wrong from the start. All this time, she had been lost in a story that wasn’t hers.

The knowledge of it chewed its way through her until she could bear it no more.

So she changed the narrative. 

The engagement ended in tears and disappointment laid at her feet, anger and bewilderment slung.

 _We don’t even know you anymore,_ they told her. _Why would you betray me, him, us like this?_

But that was the funny bit, the bit that tugged at the back of her skull as she walked away. 

They had not known her. They had never known her.

And she had only ever betrayed herself. For years and years and years, betrayed her own heart. 

She found herself lost in the sudden absence of the story she had followed for so long. Lost and unmoored, afraid. 

But, the price of freedom was high, and she willingly accepted its burden.

That, the walking away, was the first act of loyalty she had shown her heart in a lifetime. The first rebellion against the world and its weight.

That was the first.

“And this? This is the second,” the teacher said,

as she met the gardener’s eyes,

lifted the gardener’s palm and pressed it to her lips. 

A tear escaped down one cheek,

only to be caught by the gardener’s kiss,

light across her skin.

The gardener listened to the teacher’s story. She did not interrupt, but held her breath as echoes of her own broken story reverberated within the teacher’s. 

A narrative told, a narrative believed until the breaking point. 

The painful wound left from the shards and the tumble, when at last it shatters. 

The bone-aching work of writing something new, something right, something true.

Backstory, becoming part of the soil. Newness, blooming in its wake.

They stayed, heads bowed together, eyes shut against the world, for a long moment, for breath upon breath upon breath. 

The gardener would have, if her heart could have born it, held the teacher back.

 _I’ve had enough trouble in my life,_ she would have said. _Been left behind enough times to know I’m better off on my own. People aren’t worth the trouble._

 _Do you think that’s true?_ The teacher might have asked, and her eyes would have begun to doubt this fragile moment. She would have begun to fear the fracture of this hope. _I don’t think that’s true._

But the gardener’s heart could not bear it. 

She had learned, from years of a bruised and battered heart, not to trust, not to hope. 

But she had also learned that every now and then, something, or someone, is worth the effort, worth the risk. 

On those rare occasions, the armor is laid down and the heart accepts the burden, the uncertainty, the end not yet written.

She might have pointed out the vines winding around the fire escape’s rungs, cheery against the night, the stark white blossoms and their transience.

 _I suppose, like this moonflower here, every now and then,_ she might have started, and the hope would roar in the teacher’s eyes, reflecting back the hope in the gardener’s heart.

She could have held the teacher back, but her heart had already decided. 

Skip to the end. 

Don’t let another moment slip by.

The teacher felt the gardener’s decision, felt it in the gardener’s next inhale, in the way her fingertips found their home on the teacher’s knee.

She opened her eyes and found the gardener waiting. 

And then the wait was done.

They kissed as the moon winked and the moonflower blossoms opened in greeting.

Slow at first, for the briefest of moments, as they found their bearings, as they convinced themselves this was real.

Then considerably less slow. 

Palms grazed against brick and teeth on collar bones. Tongues across warm skin and fingertips tangled in hair and clothes and bodies.

They climbed through the window in fits of laughter, broken only by haphazard kisses and bumped shins. Stumbled their way along countertop and corners, stumbled their way to bed.

_Dani._

_Jamie._

Those names, hard won, earned and dearly kept. Sighed, breathed, and screamed into the night.

The teacher woke to the gardener’s lips on her shoulder blade, a hand light on her stomach, and a thigh to ground her.

She turned to catch the gardener’s kiss.

_Lost and now, so sweetly, found._


End file.
